US student debt question

[PainRack]

The most cost effective way to obtain information (and imo also the most effective) is to buy books from Amazon. I don't expect that is going anywhere. The fundamental problem is most people are neither capable of nor interested in learning what scientists and engineers think is important. Most degrees are about producing essays summarising other essays, and students grudgingly do it because they expect a financial reward and social status at the end.

I'm curious. How does reading tons of history books qualify you to be an historian?

1. Vulcanology is a specialised technical field. Most people are going to study media studies or psychology, which impart no particular skills.

Outside of advertising, communications and media companies, social workers, company headhunters and etc?

Its not going to make you attractive and land you a job but seriously, psychology isn't important? Do you know ANY social workers in your area?

Hell, I studied pyschology and for me, it forms one of the key bridges in building empathy with others.

My point had to do with general knowledge among the vast majority of people who do not pursue academic careers and are mainly at university for the job prospects. If they are interested, knowledge is not barred to them. If they're not, university will only take more of their time and money, not give them lasting benefit.

Except that simple book memorising doesn't actually increase knowledge. Not in the sense that it teaches you how to think and link material together. Facts isn't knowledge.

As Simon Jester pointed out, we as society can't subsidise such high levels of education to everyone, as desirable as it might be for individual development. But accessing such skills and knowledge is hard, I would argue impossible to achieve as an individual nowadays.

I have read lots of history books for example, and I'm interested in history, but I'm no historian.
The arts such as fashion or etc would also require someone to critique what you're doing and give feedback for further improvement.

It would seem that your pushback against university education being foisted on "uninterested" students who's there for the job aspects has gone too far.

I don't think making schoolchildren learn French is useful, and I would end compulsory education at the stage of being able to read, write and perform simple arithmetic.

Read and write at what level? Health literacy is abysmal in many countries, and this refers to things as simple as not being able to understand whether a medication is pre-meal or post meal.
We're not even going to go into the arena of health woo and education.

I know this is off topic, as it isn't about university education in particular but the level you're suggesting, primary education is woefully inadequate to meet society and individual needs. Without a good secondary education, where students are compelled to be exposed to basic science, higher levels of reading and writing comprehension and a rough exposure to society and humanities, they can't operate in the modern world. Our schools here for example mandate that all students are exposed to basic IT lessons. Sure, its something as simple as using powerpoint, but I work alongside seniors who hasn't had the advantage of such schooling. Its a crippling advantage when you can't use basic IT technology.
As it is, I'm my ward go to IT guy, helping my nurse clinician to adjust excel so that she can slot in new staff on the work roster and such.



Here's a question I would like to add to Mr Friendly Guy though.

Just how useful would a university degree be in the workplace?

[Esquire]

My point had to do with general knowledge among the vast majority of people who do not pursue academic careers and are mainly at university for the job prospects. If they are interested, knowledge is not barred to them. If they're not, university will only take more of their time and money, not give them lasting benefit.

Entirely apart from the fact that lots of specialized knowledge is (surprisingly, I know) not available on Wikipedia or your local library, how do you suppose a non-educated population will even know that things like quantum mechanics exist? How do you intend to get more theoretical physicists if only people who are interested in theoretical physics can learn about it?There's no immediate practical application; in a few generations nobody would even remember that the theories had been proposed, let alone have any idea what to do with them.

Your point about people not enjoying their degrees is, in my opinion, more about improving access to information and making choices clearer. If someone doesn't want to go to university, they shouldn't feel pressured to do so and there should be just as many opportunities for them without a degree than with one. I'm not responding to your first point because I feel that the argument could be applied to any aspect of education after you've taught someone to read and write - why teach french when you can learn it yourself on your spare time after you've got a job?

I don't think making schoolchildren learn French is useful, and I would end compulsory education at the stage of being able to read, write and perform simple arithmetic.

Fortunately, the school system is in better hands than yours. Who determines when a kid is "able to read, write, and perform simple arithmetic?" Is it the teachers themselves? Who becomes a teacher in the first place? Lots of teachers chose that career because they were inspired by a teacher of theirs; that number will drop precipitously if kids stop going to school after second grade.

Furthermore, school is the first, and in some cases only exposure to different kinds of people many kids get before adulthood. Do you want rich kids to grow up without ever seeing a poor person except for the homeless guys they drive past on the way to the golf course? I realize this happens some anyway, but far, far less than it would under your (lack of) a system. The same thing applies to immigrants, Jews, or any other minority you care to name.

Whether society has anything to lose by me not being a volcanogist, I don't know. I've made a significant contribution to the specific area I work in, which has implications for a number of areas - including ash impacts on jet engines, volcanic climate effects, and environmental impacts of ashfall. Although there's no immediate monetary impact, I'd say that the contribution is a part of a greater whole which does ultimately benefit society. However, you could equally argue that anyone reasonably competent could have done the work I did and come up with the same conclusions. Although if any degree which isn't monetarily sound is confined to hobbies in your spare time, I'm not sure how that research would ultimately have come about.

It depends what the value of that knowledge is to other people. Perhaps engine manufacturers or insurers want to know about the effect of ash enough to fund it? I do not know. Vulcanology is a technical field so not mainly the sort of thing I have in my crosshairs, but with the current system it is very difficult to tell in individual cases.

So where's the line between technical and theoretical fields? If you yourself can't say exactly what makes vulcanology a technical field except for some possible statistical analysis use, maybe it shouldn't be classified as one? But wait - vulcanology is just as much a science as genetics is. Maybe we ought not to teach modern biology, since most of its practical applications are still under development?

Surely even you can see how ridiculous that sounds?

[HMS Conqueror]

Most of the points raised against me are pretty hysterical. I think there are much more sensible objections, but if I don't respond I feel like I would be conceding:

1. Without mass higher education, there will be no education. No, we're not going to forget quantum mechanics ever existed. The reason for this is that the tiny percentage of people who are capable of understanding (so far as it can be understood) and contributing to our knowledge of quantum mechanics are the people whose education will pay off for them. I'm talking about the mass of essay-regurgitators who would have entered the same office or customer service jobs straight from high school 50 years ago (or at 14 in the UK).

2. Without mass education, people will be ignorant. I agree people will be ignorant in so far as they are already ignorant. People in high school do not learn about QM or much about nutrition or anything like that. They half-memorise what is needed for the test and then they forget most of it afterwards. This is a combination of lack of interest and lack of ability. For most people, education is job training, but for the most part it does not improve their ability to do any job, so it is socially wasteful. It is a social signal that you have a certain mixture of IQ and conscientiousness.

3. Self-teaching is no teaching at all. I hate to be the one to tell you, but reading books and papers is most of what people do to study for a degree and pretty much all that academics do if they want to learn something new. There's nothing shoddy about books; they're a way for top people in a given field to talk to a large audience. There's very little difference to that and the lecturer reading the book (or something similar) to a lecture hall over a period of weeks. Although one difference is that a book costs ~£10, or more for a text on an obscure subject, as opposed to hundreds or thousands for a lecture course. It's certainly nice to debate and get help, but thanks to the internet that isn't much of an issue either. The quality of debate on this forum is higher than at most of the new diploma mills that have sprung up in the past few decades. Now sure, this may well be less good than getting a degree in whatever subject you're interested in, but is the difference worth the massive cost of the degree? In my view only if you're a rich kid with too much time on your hands, or the degree imparts practically useful skills.

4. Education as social engineering. I think this is the worst and most sinister argument of them all. School (pre-university anyway) most closely resembles a conscript army camp, nothing like real society in a free country, and in this regard I think it is actively harmful. It teaches blind obedience to central authority, and organises people into arbitrary age-based cadres which they can't leave regardless of the actions of the other members or the suitability of what they're learning to their ability and interests. Also, while I completely agree it's important that people learn about history, I do not want my teachers or the government deciding what I learn about and how I interpret it in this sort of politically sensitive field.

5. Classification of fields. The whole point is no central authority needs to decide what is 'important enough' to be subsidised (nb: this is done anyway; the bar may be set quite low, but the government won't pay for you to be taught about Star Wars technology, for instance). It's decided organically by what people are willing to pay for. I don't know about in the US, but in my country most medical research is already funded by private charities, so genetics isn't in any danger.

[Broomstick]

1. Without mass higher education, there will be no education. No, we're not going to forget quantum mechanics ever existed. The reason for this is that the tiny percentage of people who are capable of understanding (so far as it can be understood) and contributing to our knowledge of quantum mechanics are the people whose education will pay off for them. I'm talking about the mass of essay-regurgitators who would have entered the same office or customer service jobs straight from high school 50 years ago (or at 14 in the UK).

Having worked in offices for 20+ years prior to my career change to cobbler, I have to say that having more than rudimentary knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic is required for most modern office jobs. Even the low level support staff are expect to be able to read, use some common sense, and make low-level decisions. If they work in a specialized sort of office they may require additional knowledge, such as medical or legal terminology. A second-grade education isn't going to cut it, which is what you are apparently advocating here as the basics (I'm not conversant with how schools in the UK refer to the various levels students pass through).

2. Without mass education, people will be ignorant. I agree people will be ignorant in so far as they are already ignorant. People in high school do not learn about QM or much about nutrition or anything like that. They half-memorise what is needed for the test and then they forget most of it afterwards. This is a combination of lack of interest and lack of ability. For most people, education is job training, but for the most part it does not improve their ability to do any job, so it is socially wasteful. It is a social signal that you have a certain mixture of IQ and conscientiousness.

No, people will be more ignorant because they are so often lazy, and a couple generations of laziness will result in profound ignorance. We've all heard people say "I haven't used that since high school" or the equivalent. If you never went to high school you never would have learned that or heard of it at all.

Part of school is learning and doing things you aren't particularly interested in and don't particularly like and discovering later they are actually somewhat useful. As an example, for damn sure I wouldn't have bothered with algebra if I hadn't been forced to, but I actually have found it pretty damn useful in my life. Ditto with several other subjects. And I'm someone with a personal library of books numbering in the four digit range and a common fixture at the local library (and, oh yes, I cruise the internet, too). I'm one of the self-motivated learners yet I know that I would have bypassed things if I'd been in charge of my own education. The average person isn't going to do as well as I am.

Aside from the academics, school teaches you to do shit you're not too fond of. It teaches you the rudiments of sitting in a room with other people. Absolutely there's a lot of other things it should do and doesn't.

3. Self-teaching is no teaching at all. I hate to be the one to tell you, but reading books and papers is most of what people do to study for a degree and pretty much all that academics do if they want to learn something new.

True. However, if you're studying for a degree you are assigned a reading list by someone presumably more knowledgeable about the subject than you are, you aren't coming up with your own reading list. See, there's this problem that when you first embark on a course of study you are so ignorant you don't know what it is you don't know and some guidance is at the very least helpful. Unless you think going down blind alleys and missing major points a useful part of education?

It's certainly nice to debate and get help, but thanks to the internet that isn't much of an issue either.

Yes, it is. Again, it gets back to not knowing what you don't know. How do you determine who is an authority on a subject and who isn't? How do you check credentials? How to deal with the problem that people tend to stick with other folks who already agree with them, whether those people are right or wrong?

4. Education as social engineering. I think this is the worst and most sinister argument of them all. School (pre-university anyway) most closely resembles a conscript army camp, nothing like real society in a free country, and in this regard I think it is actively harmful. It teaches blind obedience to central authority, and organises people into arbitrary age-based cadres which they can't leave regardless of the actions of the other members or the suitability of what they're learning to their ability and interests.

Sometimes, you need to be exposed to a range of things to find out what your abilities and interests are. Not everything in life is going to be fun or interesting, yet you still have to deal with it and learning to cope with such realities at a young age is a useful skill. Living in a civilized state requires obedience to things like laws, we can't be truly free spirits doing whatever the hell we want and still maintain a viable society. Like everything else, laws and obedience can be overdone but that doesn't mean they're useless.

Also, while I completely agree it's important that people learn about history, I do not want my teachers or the government deciding what I learn about and how I interpret it in this sort of politically sensitive field.

But you're OK with the wild west of the internet and all its conspiracy theorists as an information source? Maybe TV "documentaries"?

5. Classification of fields. The whole point is no central authority needs to decide what is 'important enough' to be subsidised (nb: this is done anyway; the bar may be set quite low, but the government won't pay for you to be taught about Star Wars technology, for instance). It's decided organically by what people are willing to pay for. I don't know about in the US, but in my country most medical research is already funded by private charities, so genetics isn't in any danger.

Quite a bit of medical, science, and technological research in the US is subsidized by the Federal government. Rather useful things like the internet came out of the US government, and US supported universities, researching and constructing things. GPS, which is used world-wide these days, is still maintained by the US government using US tax money (you're welcome). Competitors to that system like GLONASS and the EU Galileo systems are likewise created, built, and supported by governments, not private charities. Sure, you could argue that GLONASS and GPS had to come out of governments (militaries, actually) but surely once the utility of such a system is apparent some private company would offer the service...? Except the EU is doing it as a joint venture between governments, Galileo is not a private company. On the medical front, the reason stem cell and cloning research in the US came to a screeching near-halt is because so damn much medical research relies in part or in whole on government grants - US private industry isn't that interested in the research end of a lot of subjects, preferring to sponge off government work. Sure, things may be different elsewhere, but as far as research in the US goes, the private industries, universities, and government have all been in bed with each other for decades. Major US universities were given the land they stand on by the US government, places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (these are called "land grant" colleges, there are over 70 of them)

So, while your arguments have some merit on some points your views are extreme and don't take into account some realities. In the UK most research may indeed be funded by private sources but in the US that is not the case. Private charities are, of course, free to fund whatever they want, and they certainly do so, but few private groups command the resources of a large government. If you want to limit your discussion to just the UK, fine, but I was under the impression you were speaking in a more generalized sense.

[mr friendly guy]

Part of school is learning and doing things you aren't particularly interested in and don't particularly like and discovering later they are actually somewhat useful. As an example, for damn sure I wouldn't have bothered with algebra if I hadn't been forced to, but I actually have found it pretty damn useful in my life. Ditto with several other subjects. And I'm someone with a personal library of books numbering in the four digit range and a common fixture at the local library (and, oh yes, I cruise the internet, too). I'm one of the self-motivated learners yet I know that I would have bypassed things if I'd been in charge of my own education. The average person isn't going to do as well as I am.

Interestingly, while I liked algebra and was good at it, I haven't had to use it much in work life. However I am still glad that I have high school level of maths. I wouldn't have thought much of it, until I encounter people on the internet who can't even do that. For example I can use some of the basic skills to do things like saying that something growing at 8% will double in 9 years (using the "rule of 72", although I can easily demonstrate it using logarithms). I ran into someone on youtube who didn't believe this, trying to mock me. I naturally flamed him back and showed him the calculations, and ridiculed how he most probably didn't even pass high school.

[mr friendly guy]

4. Education as social engineering. I think this is the worst and most sinister argument of them all. School (pre-university anyway) most closely resembles a conscript army camp, nothing like real society in a free country, and in this regard I think it is actively harmful. It teaches blind obedience to central authority, and organises people into arbitrary age-based cadres which they can't leave regardless of the actions of the other members or the suitability of what they're learning to their ability and interests. Also, while I completely agree it's important that people learn about history, I do not want my teachers or the government deciding what I learn about and how I interpret it in this sort of politically sensitive field.

I am curious, what makes you think that in say, primary school you are capable of deciding what is important to learn? Do you also confine this decision making power just to history, or to other subjects as well?

[PainRack]

1. Without mass higher education, there will be no education. No, we're not going to forget quantum mechanics ever existed. The reason for this is that the tiny percentage of people who are capable of understanding (so far as it can be understood) and contributing to our knowledge of quantum mechanics are the people whose education will pay off for them. I'm talking about the mass of essay-regurgitators who would have entered the same office or customer service jobs straight from high school 50 years ago (or at 14 in the UK).

The world isn't the same as it was 50 years ago.
This isn't 1947, when dads pulled kids out of school so that they could be apprenticed or sent to office work. Just how many sales receptionists, cashiers and etc do you need now? There's even automated checkouts now.
There isn't enough demand and the pay is too low.

In term of skillset, high tech industries require at least a basic level of technical education so that you could comply with the quality controls neccessary for semi-conducters. One needs to be enrolled in a trade school nowadays for plumbers and etc because the complexity of PVC pipes, metal, heat, corrosion and building codes is much vaster than in the past, especially if you wish to flutter between industrial and domestic use.

For most people, education is job training, but for the most part it does not improve their ability to do any job, so it is socially wasteful. It is a social signal that you have a certain mixture of IQ and conscientiousness.

Most job training doesn't improve their ability to do any job? Justify this.

3. Self-teaching is no teaching at all. I hate to be the one to tell you, but reading books and papers is most of what people do to study for a degree and pretty much all that academics do if they want to learn something new. There's nothing shoddy about books; they're a way for top people in a given field to talk to a large audience. There's very little difference to that and the lecturer reading the book (or something similar) to a lecture hall over a period of weeks. Although one difference is that a book costs ~£10, or more for a text on an obscure subject, as opposed to hundreds or thousands for a lecture course. It's certainly nice to debate and get help, but thanks to the internet that isn't much of an issue either. The quality of debate on this forum is higher than at most of the new diploma mills that have sprung up in the past few decades. Now sure, this may well be less good than getting a degree in whatever subject you're interested in, but is the difference worth the massive cost of the degree? In my view only if you're a rich kid with too much time on your hands, or the degree imparts practically useful skills.

I understand you view this topic in the aspect of learning as a hobby.

But even here, learning under others is still easier and etc. Learning model painting and crafting from instruction manuals and magazines was different from having someone teach me.

The internet as a tool of education does provide new means of providing feedback, but formal feedback from experts as opposed to self taught amateurs is different.


Furthermore, would you mind qualifying just what subjects qualify as non serious, and how many students are doing this for hobby purposes? For job purposes, again, in advertising, business, formal teaching does provide advantages and benefits.

What degrees do you think provide no advantage in terms of job productivity/etc ?

5. Classification of fields. The whole point is no central authority needs to decide what is 'important enough' to be subsidised (nb: this is done anyway; the bar may be set quite low, but the government won't pay for you to be taught about Star Wars technology, for instance). It's decided organically by what people are willing to pay for. I don't know about in the US, but in my country most medical research is already funded by private charities, so genetics isn't in any danger.

What people are willing to pay for and what is needed by society may differ. There's a shortage of nursing in both the UK and the US, and for the US, this has required government intervention to boost funding for both training and recruitment.

[Simon_Jester]

Most of the points raised against me are pretty hysterical. I think there are much more sensible objections, but if I don't respond I feel like I would be conceding:

1. Without mass higher education, there will be no education. No, we're not going to forget quantum mechanics ever existed. The reason for this is that the tiny percentage of people who are capable of understanding (so far as it can be understood) and contributing to our knowledge of quantum mechanics are the people whose education will pay off for them. I'm talking about the mass of essay-regurgitators who would have entered the same office or customer service jobs straight from high school 50 years ago (or at 14 in the UK).

This is an argument for shifting the balance of high school and college education to focus more on things like scientific knowledge.

By the way- "essay regurgitation?" That's also known as "teaching people to write." Being able to write "See Spot run" on the page is not the same as being able to compose multipage documents expressing your opinions- and there are a lot of jobs for which that is a necessary skill.

Also, you are ignoring the fact that highly educated people come from educated backgrounds. Compare, in our society, the number of people who earn Ph.Ds in advanced technical fields who come from families of college graduates to the number of people who earn them and come from families with a third grade education. If your parents left school as small children and never learned to do algebra or write an essay because this wasn't "necessary," you will not be encouraged to pursue these things because it won't occur to your parents that they're necessary. You won't have the kind of easy access to resources like books, museums, and the simple ability to ask "Daddy, why is the world hot in the summer and cool in the winter?" and get an informative answer.

How many of us would be as educated as we now are if we didn't have that? I know I wouldn't.

2. Without mass education, people will be ignorant. I agree people will be ignorant in so far as they are already ignorant. People in high school do not learn about QM or much about nutrition or anything like that. They half-memorise what is needed for the test and then they forget most of it afterwards. This is a combination of lack of interest and lack of ability. For most people, education is job training, but for the most part it does not improve their ability to do any job, so it is socially wasteful. It is a social signal that you have a certain mixture of IQ and conscientiousness.

People will be vastly more ignorant if these things are not taught at all, and the background levels of ignorance will rise. Instead of 50% of the population not understanding evolution, it will be more like 80% or 90%... at which point evolution gets banned from being taught at all, because the number of people defending it is tiny compared to the number of people attacking it. Instead of 50% of the population not knowing what "representative democracy" means, it will be more like 90%... at which point it becomes very easy to abolish "representative democracy" altogether because very few people will notice.

The existence of general knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge that not everyone has, is a social good. Because ignorant people are easily manipulated to do incredibly stupid and self-destructive things, and the more ignorant they are, the easier it is.

3. Self-teaching is no teaching at all. I hate to be the one to tell you, but reading books and papers is most of what people do to study for a degree and pretty much all that academics do if they want to learn something new. There's nothing shoddy about books; they're a way for top people in a given field to talk to a large audience. There's very little difference to that and the lecturer reading the book (or something similar) to a lecture hall over a period of weeks. Although one difference is that a book costs ~£10, or more for a text on an obscure subject, as opposed to hundreds or thousands for a lecture course. It's certainly nice to debate and get help, but thanks to the internet that isn't much of an issue either. The quality of debate on this forum is higher than at most of the new diploma mills that have sprung up in the past few decades. Now sure, this may well be less good than getting a degree in whatever subject you're interested in, but is the difference worth the massive cost of the degree? In my view only if you're a rich kid with too much time on your hands, or the degree imparts practically useful skills.

Students taking a graduate degree do not educate themselves purely by reading books and papers. They have advisers who guide them to identify which things they need to read, and help them understand what they read, and keep up the pressure to do large amounts of reading even when they're bored or uninterested or unaware that there's anything more that needs to be learned.

That's the part of teaching that you cannot duplicate just by locking children in a library and waiting for them to pop out as "educated." Without that, students' education will be limited entirely to what they happen to read and deem important before they get bored or distracted or confused. Which for real people, isn't very much education.

I'm beginning to wonder if you have any experience of education past primary school; you don't seem to know a goddamn thing about how it works.

4. Education as social engineering. I think this is the worst and most sinister argument of them all. School (pre-university anyway) most closely resembles a conscript army camp, nothing like real society in a free country, and in this regard I think it is actively harmful. It teaches blind obedience to central authority, and organises people into arbitrary age-based cadres which they can't leave regardless of the actions of the other members or the suitability of what they're learning to their ability and interests. Also, while I completely agree it's important that people learn about history, I do not want my teachers or the government deciding what I learn about and how I interpret it in this sort of politically sensitive field.

This is an argument for reorganizing the schools, not abolishing them.

Also, personally I think you don't want your teachers deciding what you learn about history because you want to be able to exclude uncomfortable facts. A lot of people feel the same way about teaching evolution in school biology classes. Civilized countries don't humor them, because it's a damned stupid and pro-ignorance attitude toward life.

It takes a very special sort of person to say "I would rather that 80% of the population be ignorant, so that the other 20% is that little extra bit more free to decide history means." This attitude is not compatible with the survival of a technologically advanced civilization, and it certainly isn't compatible with keeping such a society free from tyranny.

[Esquire]

Simon put it better than I could hope to. There are problems with the public education system, nobody denies this - but the solution isn't to abolish it entirely, it's to make it better.

[HMS Conqueror]

It's difficult for me to respond to a lot of long posts, especially as each is multiquoted out to a lot of tangents. So I'll try to restate my position in a way that hopefully responds to most of your criticisms.

1. University education is expensive. Really expensive. At $20k/year tuition, at least $10k/year food and board, and say $20k/year lost income, a 4 year degree adds up to easily $200k, and then if you are accounting for the market interest rate too (this is borne by someone, even if it's the taxpayer), a university education is comparable in price to buying a house.

2. This is an unreasonable amount to spend for mere curiosity. Cheaper methods (Amazon, etc.) may be inferior, but they are also of order 1,000x cheaper. They aren't that much worse.

3. Education is largely ineffective at social engineering in the way you want - most people do not learn and retain detailed knowledge on the things you want them to - but even if it were, that's not a good reason to subsidise it and certainly not for the state to have direct control of the classrooms. A country where the government can choose what students learn is a country where the government has altogether too much control. Even if what it teaches is just whatever is bland and inoffensive at the time, it still entrenches a status quo that may not be desirable. Finally, the political bias of education tends to follow the political biases of educators, in my experience.

4. It is only worthwhile for people to do college educations if a) $200k isn't much money to them or b) the real return is much greater. The latter is only true for a small number of people and a small number of subjects. Where this is true, there is no need for subsidy. Either the costs will be borne by employers (eg. the old nursing schools, apprenticeships, etc.) or students will have confidence that they can be paid back by future earnings (eg. medical schools).

5. Not really a point, more a reminder of what I'm not saying. Learning to read and write has a far lower cost and a large return for almost everyone.

Take-home point: the system is broken. It is absorbing an enormous amount of money without returning anything nearly worth it in most cases. It is majorly responsible for the squeeze on middle class standard of living despite generally rising real compensation. We don't want to make it better (read: more expensive), any more than we would want to make a chocolate teapot better. We want something else entirely.

[Purple]

One question to ask is why tuitions cost that much. I mean, there is no way in hell that it takes more than 1-2K to cover all the expenses a student incurs (like say books, resources and utilities used for lectures / number of students, etc.) So you could make the claim that universities are massively overcharging in order to profit from students. Nationalize them and take away all the profit margins and the tuitions and thus debts might plummet. Add to that nationalized non profit housing like the case used to be in eastern European communist countries and suddenly studies become much more affordable.

[Stark]

Those giant georgian building won't pay for themselves.

[D.Turtle]

One question to ask is why tuitions cost that much. I mean, there is no way in hell that it takes more than 1-2K to cover all the expenses a student incurs (like say books, resources and utilities used for lectures / number of students, etc.) So you could make the claim that universities are massively overcharging in order to profit from students. Nationalize them and take away all the profit margins and the tuitions and thus debts might plummet. Add to that nationalized non profit housing like the case used to be in eastern European communist countries and suddenly studies become much more affordable.

First of all, you massively underestimate the costs that a student incurs and the costs of running a university. Secondly, the reason that US tuition costs have risen so quickly is that states have either lowered or not increased the amount of money they are giving to universities, so tuitions have to rise dis-proportionally to cover the difference:

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Another issue that's developed over the last few years follows D.Turtle's chart: decreasing state expenditures have led not only to rising tuition, but also painful reorganization of university programs that leave students struggling to get classes for years. The California State University system has been so badly hit by budget cuts that they've resorted to all sorts of methods to reduce enrollment. The number of classes offered have shrunk dramatically. First year calculus courses have been reduced from 30 sections per semester to 7. Some classes are only offered once a year or every other year. Oftentimes the required classes are offered one section each, at exactly the same day and time, so you have to take them in successive semesters instead of simultaneously. It does little good to try to fill in the units with elective classes because they are either not available (if you need them), or if they don't contribute to advancing your graduation, they can push you over the unit cap which will automatically and permanently end your eligibility for financial aid, forcing you to take private loans at exorbitant interest rates because you can't get federal loans or find scholarships in time. If you don't pay in full on time, you will be disenrolled and it will be that much harder to get back into classes at a later date after obtaining the money. In my case, this happened because of transferring so many units after changing schools and majors several times. The annoying thing is that I paid for all that out of my own pocket, and only needed financial aid for the final year, which has dragged on to three years because of class cuts. Also, since the state universities do not charge per unit, but a flat fee (well, actually, one fee for half time or less, and a slightly higher fee for anything over six units), even though you don't get the classes you are still obligated to pay full tuition whether you get seven units or seventeen. Plus the resulting awkward schedules keep you tied to the university location (since you can't transfer at the end and still meet residency requirements), so it can be difficult to follow employment when and where it is available, increasing your dependence on loans to make living expenses in the mean time.

[Broomstick]

It's difficult for me to respond to a lot of long posts, especially as each is multiquoted out to a lot of tangents.

See this tiny violin? It's playing a teeny-tiny sad song for you. Haven't you self-directed yourself to learn to read long passages and make essay responses?

1. University education is expensive. Really expensive. At $20k/year tuition, at least $10k/year food and board, and say $20k/year lost income, a 4 year degree adds up to easily $200k, and then if you are accounting for the market interest rate too (this is borne by someone, even if it's the taxpayer), a university education is comparable in price to buying a house.

Countering that - not all colleges cost $20k a year, there are scholarships available in many cases, and if you can arrange to live off campus (particularly if you live at your parents' home and commute, or have roommates) you can reduce your room and board costs considerably.

On top of which - in many instances having a degree substantially increases one's income over a lifetime even if you aren't an MD or other near-guaranteed high earner. Thus, education can be seen as an investment that gives a return over time in the form of higher income. My last few years in corporate America I was earning 50k a year - in other words, in four years I was earning $200k. People without degrees doing similar work were earning about 30k a year in the same company. Arguably, with that pay differential, a 200k degree would pay for itself in 10 years. (I also hasten to note that my 4 year degree did not cost me 200k. More like $48k total including "room and board" which was actually off-campus housing and me doing my own cooking. In my case yes, it certainly did pay off to get that degree.)

Of course, you still might wind up "overpaying" for your education, but the point is that there are ways to get a college education for less than your estimate.

2. This is an unreasonable amount to spend for mere curiosity. Cheaper methods (Amazon, etc.) may be inferior, but they are also of order 1,000x cheaper. They aren't that much worse.

It depends on what you want to do. If you want armchair knowledge that you never put into practice yeah, download some books. If you actually want to DO certain things you will need real-world instruction. Ideally, a teacher doesn't just lecture he or she also functions as coach, adviser, and source of objective feedback. A good teaching/training program and a good instructor ARE worth a couple magnitudes of value more than a book.

3. Education is largely ineffective at social engineering in the way you want - most people do not learn and retain detailed knowledge on the things you want them to - but even if it were, that's not a good reason to subsidise it and certainly not for the state to have direct control of the classrooms. A country where the government can choose what students learn is a country where the government has altogether too much control.

There is benefit in exposing people to a variety of things even if not all of them will "stick". If you learn something once in childhood then re-learning it later, if it becomes necessary to do so, will be easier than if you had never encountered it before.

And I think you're confusing "government setting minimum standards" with "government dictating education". The government and society have an interest in adults being able to read, write, and do math at a certain minimum level that allows them to be functional in society. There is an interest in everyone having a certain basic background knowledge in several additional topics. That's not the same as dictating every detail of every class curriculum.

4. It is only worthwhile for people to do college educations if a) $200k isn't much money to them or b) the real return is much greater. The latter is only true for a small number of people and a small number of subjects. Where this is true, there is no need for subsidy. Either the costs will be borne by employers (eg. the old nursing schools, apprenticeships, etc.) or students will have confidence that they can be paid back by future earnings (eg. medical schools).

Industry used to, indeed, train employees. That is no longer the case, and with the global economy there is no incentive for businesses to train their employees except in certain rare instances.

5. Not really a point, more a reminder of what I'm not saying. Learning to read and write has a far lower cost and a large return for almost everyone.

Which might be why we start with it, but it really is only the beginning.

[PainRack]

I know its difficult to reply to so many people, each with various points and understanding but again.........

Your overall arching point is that the bulk of university education does not need to be subsidised by the government, because not everyone who goes to university needs the degree.
You argued that most university education is done for the sake of "learning" and is thus a hobby, and not economically driven.

Yet, a second tangent you bring up is that people are in university to regurgitate essays for the job prospects, and that the degree is not useful in increasing productivity.
You go on to elaborate that this obviously doesn't apply to "technical" fields, but assert that industry/participants will do enough, that the government doesn't need to subsidise university education.

While any of the posters might had seized on specific portions of the argument to tweak it apart, again, your post simply doesn't reflect reality.


You STILL haven't justify what subjects are mere curiousity and has no impact on producitivity at work. Is it history? English Literature? What? Your initial examples of media studies and psychology is plainly wrong. These two subjects ARE needed for many jobs and would parlay well in terms of recruitment as well as expertise.

Your assertion that people/industry knows what they need is mindboggling, since I already told you that there's a shortage of nurses in the US, requiring government intervention to support more training schools, YET, you use this as an example of industry leading the way?!?!?!



Lastly. I would like to remind you of my earlier question, what is the expected level of literacy/reading comprehension you're talking about.

[Terralthra]

$20k/year is also a fairly high number, for public institutions. The CSU system, for example, charges a quarter of that (roughly $3,000) per semester. You'd have to go to private universities or top-tier UCs to get near $20k/year.

Also, many students don't go to even CSUs for all four years. They do their general education requirements at community college, then transfer to a 4-year university for their upper-division work.

Finally, unless I'm mistaken, people have to pay for room & board regardless of being in college or not. Why is that magically a "college expense"?

[PainRack]

$20k/year is also a fairly high number, for public institutions. The CSU system, for example, charges a quarter of that (roughly $3,000) per semester. You'd have to go to private universities or top-tier UCs to get near $20k/year.

Also, many students don't go to even CSUs for all four years. They do their general education requirements at community college, then transfer to a 4-year university for their upper-division work.

Finally, unless I'm mistaken, people have to pay for room & board regardless of being in college or not. Why is that magically a "college expense"?

Well, shifting to a new town, rental and stuff might incurs more cost than if one stays at home, or in one hometown.

[Norseman]

People will be vastly more ignorant if these things are not taught at all, and the background levels of ignorance will rise. Instead of 50% of the population not understanding evolution, it will be more like 80% or 90%... at which point evolution gets banned from being taught at all, because the number of people defending it is tiny compared to the number of people attacking it.

I'd just like to say one thing. I would be amazed if there's any country on the planet where 50% of the population understand evolution even at a grade school level. Even in Europe where the overwhelming majority believe in evolution they believe in evolution because they're being told that this is the correct answer. The overwhelming majority would be completely unable to give even the most cursory explanation of what evolution is and how it works. Europeans believe in evolution because because they've been propagandized to believe in it.

Oh for the record, I do believe in evolution as being the best explanation I've seen so far of the development of complex organisms.

I should also add that the same is true for issues like racism, gay rights, environmentalism, and so forth. People do not understand any of these issues in even the most cursory ways, but they are told by authority figures what the right answer is and they go with that. If the average child asks "Dad, why is it hot in summer and cold in winter?" Their dad would go, "Urrr..." and then either answer "Because God did it!" or "Because the sun is closer in the summer." It seems to me that this place is full of intellectuals, and for some reason intellectuals seem to radically overestimate the level of background and "common" knowledge in the population at large. I think that a lot of good ideas have failed because of this.

Now I do believe in education, but you seriously need to stop trying to teach a pig to sing. In Norway high-school has two tracks, the slightly more demanding and cerebral track making you ready for general university, and the trade oriented track which is geared towards teaching you mechanical arts and getting you into an apprenticeship or trade-related school. That really is the best course of action IMHO.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd just like to say one thing. I would be amazed if there's any country on the planet where 50% of the population understand evolution even at a grade school level. Even in Europe where the overwhelming majority believe in evolution they believe in evolution because they're being told that this is the correct answer. The overwhelming majority would be completely unable to give even the most cursory explanation of what evolution is and how it works. Europeans believe in evolution because because they've been propagandized to believe in it.

Oh for the record, I do believe in evolution as being the best explanation I've seen so far of the development of complex organisms.

Thing is, if someone "believes in evolution" (as opposed to understanding it), you can at least talk to them about how it works, or they can look it up on Wikipedia or whatever. They won't just automatically reject it out of hand the way a fundamentalist who's decided the world was created in seven days during 4004 BC would.

This makes a difference. It also makes a difference to whether evolution continues to be taught in schools over the objections of the fundamentalists, for instance.

Now I do believe in education, but you seriously need to stop trying to teach a pig to sing. In Norway high-school has two tracks, the slightly more demanding and cerebral track making you ready for general university, and the trade oriented track which is geared towards teaching you mechanical arts and getting you into an apprenticeship or trade-related school. That really is the best course of action IMHO.

Put it this way.

I favor teaching people what evolution is once in their life, if nothing else to separate out the people who do know from the ones who do. Likewise, people should probably know what an acid is and what a base is, at least once in their life. Should know why the seasons happen, at least once in their life. They may forget all these things- but this is the Internet age, you could look them up if you wanted to... if you recognize that there's an answer and think that knowing it may be slightly better than not knowing it for whatever reason.

What I don't like is the attitude that we shouldn't bother even trying to explain these mysterious concepts to the lumpenproles. It's not just the question of whether people actually know these things or not that matters- it's the attitude: who do they ask if they happen to want to know? What category of answers will they listen to for questions that involve scientific fact? Do they even believe that questions about why things happen have answers?

Similar questions apply to the social sciences- do people recognize that they have a history, that words like "freedom" mean something slightly different from just "the way I'm living right now?" Even a vague notion of these things can make the difference between liberty and servitude in a civil society.

We've had one great era of serfdom already, two if you're in Eastern Europe; I don't want to grow old in the beginnings of a third.

Personally, I think that HMS here would be content with this- provided there's an education to be had for the entrepreneur class and a small minority of suitably dorky technical workers immediately under them. As long as they have knowledge and the political leverage that comes from knowledge, who cares if the rest of the population are barely-literate peasants? But I don't think society should work that way.

[amigocabal]

Nationalize them and take away all the profit margins and the tuitions and thus debts might plummet.

The problem is that when you nationalize them, you nationalize what is taught. Imagine what would have been taught about racial biology in the Jim Crow South around 1910-1930, had this idea been in force.

A better solution is price controls on tuition, while allowing private management of the curriculum.

[PainRack]

Now I do believe in education, but you seriously need to stop trying to teach a pig to sing. In Norway high-school has two tracks, the slightly more demanding and cerebral track making you ready for general university, and the trade oriented track which is geared towards teaching you mechanical arts and getting you into an apprenticeship or trade-related school. That really is the best course of action IMHO.

Tracking/streaming/insert noun of choice doesn't mean abandoning a general education though.

The Norweigian system doesn't seem too bad from the looks of it.

[Simon_Jester]

Nationalize them and take away all the profit margins and the tuitions and thus debts might plummet.

The problem is that when you nationalize them, you nationalize what is taught. Imagine what would have been taught about racial biology in the Jim Crow South around 1910-1930, had this idea been in force.

About the same as what was taught in the Jim Crow South around 1910-1930.

It's not like the Deep South's private citizens were any more enlightened about race than their government.

[Terralthra]

There's no doubt that colleges which make you live on-campus are forcing you to raise your cost of food & board, but that doesn't seem like it's the majority position. Estimates range from 1/3 of all college students living on campus (Department of Education Firewatch Publication, 2009) to even lower:

When it comes to a student’s living situation, half of those polled (49.7%) said they would be living at home during the school year, while more than one-fourth (28.6%) will live in off-campus housing, one-fifth (18.7%) will stay in a dormitory or other type of college housing and a small fraction (1.3%) will live in a fraternity or sorority house.

Per that, at least half of all college students do exactly what you'd say they should do: live at home and exploit economies of scale.

Further, the US Census found that out of an estimated 16-18 million full-time enrolled college students, 2.2 million lived in on-campus housing. So, by that accounting, on-campus housed students account for 12.2-13.7% of all full-time students. Including part-time students makes that number shrink even further.

[Simon_Jester]

D-13, arguably the problem with the bachelors' degrees is volume, not the universities themselves. When the universities are trying to take on people who are, realistically, in the 40th or 50th percentile of the population... yes, they have to dumb down the material. Memorization and note-taking (which average people can do) take the place of complex mathematical and technical work (which they can't). Rehashing the ideas in someone else's work (which average people can do) takes the place of critical analysis and independent creativity (which they can't do, or can't do well)

The more people we send to college, the more dumbed-down degree programs we must create to give them something to do that's within their capacity.

In the majors that are insulated from this effect you still get very intelligent and fairly rigorous programs that are not pretentious or undereducated- certainly no worse than the typical home-school case who thinks his self-assigned reading makes him an expert.